People are born stars, naturally giving off light and warmth.
Through negative circumstances, some collapse in on themselves and become black holes.

With the recent first ever photograph of a black hole, this is an exciting time to be alive. We are making progress unraveling the mysteries of the creative and destructive forces that make up our universe, and also, our minds.

The story of good versus evil is as old as mankind itself, but instead of “good” versus “bad,” I find it useful to view these as creative and destructive forces. Creation is what we consider good: love, light, the spark that produces things of value, birthing new life and art. Destructive forces we see as the evil antagonist to this: that which ends life, monsters that lurk in the shadows waiting to devour us, our fear of the unknown, psychopaths, and those that harm themselves or others.

For the last year, I’ve had my personal struggles with these destructive forces. I have not been able to create much, but not for lack of trying. I have been riddled with mental traps put in place from years of schooled conditioning… but now I am finally free.

I share my journey with hopes that others may escape the black holes of their darker natures so that they can feed their light of creation.

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.

I’m on a massage table in an healing room surrounded by candles, crystals, raddles and feathers, not sure what to expect. A strange tall hermaphadite statue with a penis and breasts looks down at me, as if questioning me: What are you doing here? Before I can answer, the Shaman enters, asks me to relax, places a crystal on my abdomen, and gets to work.

As he waves his hands over me, I’m shocked at the feeling of energy shifting in my body, waves of tingling sensations rise and subside… When he’s done I feel relieved, noticable lighter, as if emotional pain had truly left me…

How did I get here―to the point where I am taking a Shaman healing class, exercising enough of an open mind to blow emotional traumas into crystals and have conversations about chakras and energy fields…?

The simple answer to that question is faith.

Faith

Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.

Faith used to be a dirty word to me, a word that meant foolishly believing in the unreal.

I considered myself a rational person. I told myself that I must see first, and only then will I believe.

We are at odds with our home. We live in disharmony with Planet Earth. Rather than rehashing doomsday statistics, the pollution, ozone, and animal extinction rates, let’s see how simple mindset shifts can empower us to take positive action.

This post is about hope.

The first step is always the hardest. It is believing in new possibilities where before there were none. It is letting go of the overwhelm and powerlessness you may feel as a single human being on a vast planet in need of help.

The first part is accepting that no, you can’t do it all, but that also, your actions matter. Your way of living, of being, of thinking, touches everyone that you come into contact with and spreads. Sustainable change is gradual change, and as you know, this is a post about sustainability.

I invite you to make a difference with me. These changes will not be sudden or overwhelming, but to the contrary, are gradual, and might even be fun.

There are two paths before you.

Most people don’t choose. They stand still. In never stepping into their power, they become the tools of those that do.

In choosing between the two paths before you, in embarking beyond this fork in the road, you become a sovereign being. You stop being only effected and start affecting your environment.

The first of these two paths is glittering with gold. It promises to give you everything you can imagine: fame, wealth, success, and a never-ending line of adoration. The price of this path is pretty straight forward: your soul. What? You don’t want it badly enough? Don’t you know that success requires sacrifice?

I have a confession to make: I have walked this path of darkness. Driven by a desire for power and the security it promised to provide, I worked for a man who was anything but trustworthy, but who demanded absolute trust from anyone who had the honor of working with him.

The process of grooming me for this manipulation took him over a year. He attended my publicly hosted meetups and positioned himself as an intelligent, business-savy mentor—someone willing to provide guidance to me along my uncertain path as an ambitious 19-year-old without direction.

After one of my first meetups he attended, he pulled me aside, said that he believed in me, and that he wanted to invest thousands of dollars in helping me start a design business.

After a few more conversations, he dropped off the face of the earth. I didn’t hear from him for six months. When he eventually re-surfaced, he asked me, “Did you learn your lesson?”

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

I am thrilled with the feedback from my last post—a tear-jerker for any who attempts reading it. It’s a story that took me two years to write… not that I was actively writing it the whole time. I desperately wanted to share my story sooner. I wanted to send it to newspapers, accompanied with my own rude political-cartoon style illustrations mocking the mental healthcare system, but I couldn’t do it. I was too angry.

I couldn’t let myself share my story until I let myself empathize with mental healthcare practitioners—the people I called and left countless unanswered voicemails for help—desperate cries drowned in a sea of others. I had to stop wanting to tear them down and instead see things from their perspective: the overwhelm and frustration that comes from needing to solve urgent problems with the wrong set of tools. You do your best to cover gashing wounds with band-aids, but the line of wailing wounded is going out the door.

I couldn’t let myself write about my experiences with family mental illness until I let myself empathize with mass killing shooters. It is a topic that you think I would be at the forefront of discussing—but until then—I could do nothing but look away.

I couldn’t let myself write my story until I let myself feel all of the pain again. My story has encouraged others to write about their experiences, and I am thrilled for this: we need all the perspectives we can get. But I warn you, this is not easy. The following outlines my writing process, along with common pitfalls that experience has taught me to avoid.